The chief financial officer of power generation business Drax Group is standing down and retiring from corporate life next year. Andy Skelton joined Drax as its finance boss in January 2019, replacing interim CFO Dan Jones, following a three-year stint at financial markets software developer Fidessa Group.
His appointment came as the firm was reducing its use of coal ahead of a national deadline to phase out the highly-polluting fossil fuel from Britain's energy system. Once Western Europe's biggest coal-fired power station, the Drax plant in North Yorkshire stopped using coal in 2023, nearly 50 years after it started generating power.
Drax is now one of the world's largest biomass power plants, generating enough electricity to meet around 6 per cent of the UK's power needs. However, the firm's environmental credentials have come under extensive scrutiny, with green pressure groups claiming Drax is the UK's largest single source of carbon emissions.
Transition: Once Western Europe's biggest coal-fired power station, the Drax plant in North Yorkshire stopped using coal in 2023, nearly 50 years after it started generating power. Drax burns millions of tonnes of wood pellets every year at its power plant, about 80 per cent of which are imported from forests in the US and Canada.
